ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
June 20, 2005 Monday
Russia to urge for balanced PACE resolution – Kosachyov
By Yuri Ulyanovsky
STRASBOURG
There is nothing extraordinary in the discussion of Russia’s meeting
its obligations to the Council of Europe at the summer session of the
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), said
Konstantin Kosachyov, chief of the committee for international
affairs of Russian parliament’s lower house.
The PACE prepares every three years reports on ten out of 46 state
members of the Council of Europe, Kosachyov said in an interview with
Itar-Tass on Monday.
The full text of PACE’s record-large report has been circulated at
the session for discussion of a draft resolution and recommendations.
The resolution contains several valid critical remarks, in particular
on Russia’s not ratifying several important provisions of the Council
of Europe, Kosachyov said.
“But the resolution has remarks that have a subjective and biased
character, and we shall insist on making amendments to it. The very
report, on the basis of which the resolution has been prepared is, in
our view, unbalanced in many provisions; it rests on unchecked and
sometimes simply absurd information,” Kosachyov said.
For example, the passport system of Russia is described as “racialism
brought to a rank of state policy and discrimination on the part of
the state”, he explained.
The Russian delegation to the PACE session will take part in the
discussion of the situation in the Central Asian countries and in
Kosovo, of a forthcoming referendum on the constitutional reform in
Armenia, democratic institutions in Azerbaijan and results of the
third summit of the Council of Europe in Warsaw.
Kosachyov said the PACE increasingly frequently trusted the Russians
to make reports at its sessions.
This time the chairman of the committee for international affairs of
Russian parliament’s upper house, Mikhail Margelov, will present a
report on the situation in the Middle East, and member of parliament
Lyudmila Pirozhkova will speak on the contribution of the European
Bank for Reconstruction and Development to economic development of
Central and Eastern European Countries.